If you're looking for the definitive example of dry wit, look no further than this 1952 version of The Importance of Being Earnest. Of course, it helps to have Oscar Wilde's beloved play as source material, but this exquisite adaptation has a charmed life of its own, with a perfectly matched director and a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Mix these ingredients with Wilde's inimitable repartee, and you've got a comedic soufflé that's cooked to perfection. Opening with a proscenium nod to its theatrical origins, the film turns Wilde's comedy of clever deception and mixed identities into a cinematic treat, and while the 10-member cast is uniformly superb, special credit must be given to Dame Edith Evans, reprising her stage role as the imperiously stuffy Lady Bracknell. To hear her Wilde-ly hilarious inflections and elongated syllables is to witness British comedy in its purest form. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Gangster Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) returns from prison to make a name for himself in the crime world. He's soon discovered by the Dead End Kids, who idolise him, and childhood pal Father Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien), who has taken a different turn from Rocky and is struggling to bring the Kids around. While still friends with Rocky, the good Father tries to persuade him to steer clear of the gang of urchins. Rocky runs foul of the law, however, when he guns down his former partners Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) and Keefer (George Bancroft) after they betray him over a cut of crime-related profits. Seen as a whole, Angels with Dirty Faces may seem dated to many viewers, but its ending is still enough to bring chills. Director Michael Curtiz infused this gritty l938 effort with an amazing amount of energy and pacing; the Dead End Kids, in their screen debut, supply a fair amount of comic relief along with their dramatic roles. It's also worth noting that at the time, the notion of a criminal being a product of his environment was a controversial one. The swaggering bantam-rooster role played by Cagney, one of the screen's greats, helped define how he would be perceived (and parodied) for years to come. This movie easily stands along with The Roaring Twenties and Little Caesar as one of the most important, archetypal gangster films of the 1930s. -Jerry Renshaw, Amazon. [+]

In Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sunnydale high school is left behind in smoking ruins and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) becomes a college freshman at the (fictitious) University of California Sunnydale campus. The major arc of the season involves a semi-sinister Man from U. N. C. L. E. -type government agency known as The Initiative which has its Bond-style HQ under the campus. Their nefarious plans involve capturing vampires and demons, including the now-regular character Spike (James Marsters), and hacking them to pieces for assembly into a Frankensteinian supermonster or fitting them with chips that mute their killing urges. Buffy's plank-like new boyfriend Riley (Mark Blucas) is deadweight, Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) is shoved into new corners of irrelevance (and turns folkie!), Willow (Alyson Hannigan) breaks up with the werewolf (Seth Green) and comes out, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) whines about not being a student but starts dating a former demon (the amusing Emma Caulfield), Angel (David Boreanaz) has his own series but drops in for crossovers (you will need to buy the Angel box sets to find out how some key plot lines pay off) and previously killed or comatose semi-regulars pop in for dreams or revivals. A run of shaky episodes starts off this season, with the show seemingly uncomfortable with the new setting as it treads water with the same old monsters. [+]

A man from a post-apocalyptic future is chosen to return to the past in order help save humanity because he's haunted by a vivid memory from his childhood of a murder at an airport. If that sounds familiar, you've either already seen Chris Marker's exquisite "photo-roman" or Terry Gilliam's loose remake of it, (Twelve Monkeys. ) Good as Gilliam's film is, it's no substitute for La Jetée, which is the sort of cinematic experimental oddity that wraps around the imagination like a vine and, once seen, can never be forgotten. A mere 25 minutes long, the "film"-really a series of still photographs run together apart from one startling moment of movement-begins in Paris before a vaguely described war drives humanity underground "to rule over a kingdom of rats". Sent back in time to the present (or rather to the film's 1962 present) by nothing more high-tech than an injection, the hero (Davos Hanich) finds the woman (Hél&eagrave;ne Chatelain) whose face he's remembered all his life since a murder at Paris' Orly airport. They grab a modest measure of happiness in their romance, conducted around Paris' museums and public gardens. A sly allusion to Hitchcock's Vertigo underlines the film's key theme: the near-mystical power of memory and the way an image can form the basis of an obsession, hence the film's use of ominous black-and-white stills, like scraps from disorganised family album. Muted and melancholy, La Jetée also sports one of the all-time great cinematic twists. -Leslie Felperin.

Set in Harlem and New Orleans in 1955, this supernatural thriller stirred a brief controversy in the US when released in 1987 because some scenes featuring Lisa Bonet (then a popular cast member of The Cosby Show) were considered too sexually explicit to be rated R. The plot follows the fortunes of a sullen detective (Mickey Rourke) who is hired to find a missing person by a shady client with pointy fingernails named Louis Cyphre (Lucifer, get it?), played with subtle menace by Robert De Niro. Rourke's investigation leads him into an underworld of voodoo and forbidden desires, and as the mystery unfolds director Alan Parker fills every scene with conspicuous style and atmospheric excess, compelling critic Pauline Kael to observe that "Parker simply doesn't have the gift of making evil seductive, and he edits like a flasher". And yet, this movie does casts a spell of its own (Roger Ebert's review was considerably more charitable), and the performances of Rourke, De Niro, Bonet and Charlotte Rampling are well suited to the ominous mood. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Autumn in New York is a by-the-numbers love story, right down to its opening shot of, yes, autumn in New York. Richard Gere stars as restaurateur/lady's man Will, while Winona Ryder plays the airy-fairy, oh-too-delicate-for-this-world Charlotte. Will is 48, Charlotte is 22, and it just keeps getting creepier: Will actually used to hang out with Charlotte's mom. She plays artily with beads and sparkly things, he notices how elfin and different she is (inspiring such stomach-churning dialogue as "I find you completely unprecedented and therefore utterly unpredictable"), and soon they're in love. Ah, but it's doomed: she has a tumor in her heart (just in case you missed the significance, Charlotte says "I'm sick in my heart"). Does Charlotte have enough time left to teach Will to truly love? While Gere does a stoic job, Ryder spends a lot of time being darling and winsome, aided by the fact that Charlotte has managed to catch one of those special movie diseases where you never look bad or get tubes stuck up your nose. Director Joan Chen doesn't have much of a script to work with, but at least she knows how to pick a cinematographer; the whole movie is shot in gorgeous autumnal colours. Several excellent supporting actors are trapped in this movie: Jill Hennessey and Anthony LaPaglia do their very best, but what can they do in the face of such a sweeping, creepy love? Autumn in New York is nothing if not an earnest movie, and it certainly means well. Much like Charlotte, it seems to cry, "Can you let me love you? Please?". The answer is an emphatic "No". [+]

The Sex and the City phenomenon continues in Series 3 of this outrageously addictive cult show. The four highly sexed thirtysomethings share their hopes, fears and even boyfriends (when Charlotte decides to throw a "used boyfriend party") in a New York where you can buy Manolo Blahniks on the proceeds of one article a week and eat mountains of junk food yet stay as thin as a pencil. But if the peripheral details remain somewhat fantastical, the searing honesty of the main storyline takes this third season to dramatic heights only suggested by the previous seasons. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) falls head-over-heels for chunky furniture designer Aidan Joff (John Corbett) but still embarks on a disastrous affair with her newlywed ex, Mr Big (Chris Noth). The resulting triangle, set against the background of Charlotte's outwardly perfect marriage to Trey (Kyle MacLachlan), proves to be electrifying viewing. But the humour is as sharp as ever too: Samantha's run-in with her drag-queen prostitute neighbours, Miranda pretending to be an air stewardess so as not to frighten men away and one of Charlotte's boyfriends talking dirty to her in bed are all moments of great high comedy. It just gets better and better. -Warwick Thompson.

Based on the chilling bestseller by Stephen King, Misery was brought to the screen by director Rob Reiner as one of the most effective thrillers of the 1990s. From a brilliant adaptation by screenwriter William Goldman, Reiner turned King's cautionary tale of fame and idolatry into a mainstream masterpiece of escalating suspense, translating King's own experience with obsessive fans into a frightening tale of entrapment and psychotic behavior. Kathy Bates deservedly won an Academy Award for her performance as Annie Wilkes, an unbalanced devotee of romance novels written by Paul Sheldon (James Caan), whose books provide Annie with a much-needed escape from her pathetic life and her secret, violent past. After Annie rescues the injured Sheldon from a car accident, she seizes the opportunity to nurse her favorite writer back to health, but her tender loving care soon turns to terrorism as she demands that Sheldon write his latest novel according to her wish-fulfillment fantasies. From this point forward, Misery percolates to a boil as equal parts mystery, thriller, and cleverly dark comedy, with the helpless author pitched in deadly warfare against his number one fan. While Bates carefully modulates her role from doting kindness to sympathetic loneliness and finally to horrifying ferocity, Caan is equally superb as the celebrated author who must literally write for his life. It's essentially a two-actor film, but Richard Farnsworth and Lauren Bacall are excellent in supporting roles as they investigate the writer's mysterious disappearance. Frightening, funny, and totally irresistible, Misery was such a hit that some of Bates's dialogue entered the popular lexicon (particularly her nagging reference to Caan as "Mister Man"), and its nail-biting thrills remain timelessly intense. -Jeff Shannon.

Given the presence of both Steve Martin and John Candy, one would expect this John Hughes comedy to be much, much funnier than it is. Certainly it's not for lack of effort on the part of its stars. Martin is an uptight businessman trying to get home from New York for the holidays. But one thing after another gets in his way-most of it having to do with Candy, a boorish but well-meaning boob who takes a liking to him. Together they travel all over the map; no matter how hard Martin tries to shake him, he can't. But Hughes's writing is never as sharp as it should be and this film winds up being only intermittently humorous. -Marshall Fine.

Made to re-launch television's most famous time traveller, Doctor Who: The Movie is an expensive feature-length episode which attempts to continue the classic series and work as a stand-alone film. Transporting the remains of the Master, Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor is diverted to San Francisco in 1999. Regenerating in the form of Paul McGann, the Doctor gains a new companion in heart surgeon Dr Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) and must stop the Master from destroying the world. All of which might have been fine, had not the most eccentrically British of programmes been almost entirely assimilated by the requirements of American network broadcasting. Matthew Jacobs' screenplay is literally nonsense, dependent on arbitrary, unexplained events while introducing numerous elements that contradict established Doctor Who mythology. The Tardis is re-imagined as a bizarre pre-Raphaelite/Gothic folly, while the Doctor, now half-human, becomes romantically involved with his lady companion. From the West Coast setting to metallic CGI morphing, from the look of Eric Roberts as the Master to a motorcycle/truck freeway chase, director Geoffrey Sax borrows freely from James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Doctor Who fans should feel relieved this travesty was not successful enough to lead to lead to a series, though McGann himself does have the potential to make a fine Doctor. This is the slightly more violent US TV edit, rather than the cut version previously released on video. On the DVD: There are two BBC trailers and a Fox promo "introducing the Doctor" to American audiences. [+]

Foursquare in the gritty-but-hearwarming tradition of Brassed Off and The Full Monty comes Billy Elliot, the first film of noted British theatrical director Stephen Daldry. The setting is County Durham in 1984, and things 'oop North are even grimmer than usual: the miners' strike is in full rancorous swing and 11-year-old Billy's dad and older brother, miners both, are staunch on the picket lines. Billy's got problems of his own. His dad's scraped together the fees to send him to boxing lessons, but Billy's discovered a different aptitude: a genius for ballet dancing. Since admitting to such an activity is tantamount, in this fiercely macho culture, to holding up a sign reading "I AM A RAVING POOF", Billy keeps it quiet. But his teacher, Mrs Wilkinson (Julie Walters, wearily undaunted) thinks he should audition for ballet school in London. Family ructions are inevitable. Daldry's film sidesteps some of the politics, both sexual and otherwise, but scores with its laconic dialogue (credit to screenwriter Lee Hall) and a cracking performance from newcomer Jamie Bell as Billy. His powerhouse dance routines, more Gene Kelly than Nureyev, carry an irresistible sense of exhilaration and self-discovery. Among a flawless supporting cast Stuart Wells stands out as Billy's sweet gay friend Michael. [+]

Director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Rosewood) made an earnest effort in this, his second film, to say a great deal that is true and relevant about living and loving in a violent, difficult time in American history. Janet Jackson plays a beautician and poet who withdraws into herself after her boyfriend is murdered by gangsters. The late Tupac Shakur plays a postman who tries to get through to her, and the two travel on a course through urban America, connecting with family and community. Singleton has so much on his mind that the film comes out a terrible muddle, but there is a certain integrity peeking through the fog. Shakur makes a startlingly good impression in his film debut, and Jackson strips away her star veneer to play something like a real person-and entirely succeeds. Maya Angelou wrote the poems that pass as those penned by Jackson's character, and she also appears in the film. -Tom Keogh.